Category: Anxiety

As part of my human services class, I wrote about the differences between an approach that attempts to help a person by understanding their problems in the context of their environment, versus one that focuses on something like childhood trauma as the root of their trouble. I used an example from my own life to illustrate the point I wanted to make, and given the content of that example, I thought the essay could pull double duty as my blog post for this week. 🙂

By focusing on the individual in context, we can take into account environmental factors that may be influencing a person’s internal state and related behavior. This approach locates the source of problems as being in the relationship between the individual and her environment. Potential solutions, therefore, will take into account environmental changes as well as personal changes, perhaps even extending up into changes in law or cultural expectations.

In contrast, a focus on personal history, such as childhood trauma, locates the source of problems as being within the individual herself, and seeks to address them on that level. Potential solutions will then revolve around personal changes within the individual herself, and not larger structural changes in society. It could be argued that considering the role of childhood trauma is taking the individual’s environment into account, but it is the environment of the past, and specific to that person’s history.

When I first started therapy, I was primarily seeking help with anxiety. Part of this manifested as high levels of social anxiety when interacting with other people. We discussed childhood experiences for quite some time, and I could definitely relate incidents of childhood bullying, betrayal, and ostracism to the anxiety I continued to feel in groups of people, or when meeting someone new for the first time. This located the problem within me, in my particular history and its reverberations.

Years later, however, I gained a different understanding of my social anxiety when I learned that I am autistic. Instead of this social anxiety arising specifically from past experiences, I saw it as arising from a life spent in a world that expected me to think and behave like everyone else, all while not knowing that I was autistic. In a way, this may still sound as if I am locating the problem within myself, specifically in my autism, but in truth the problem comes from the interaction between me and an environment that does not expect or understand neurodivergence.

This has become clearer to me as I gain more experience interacting with other autistic people. When my ways of thinking and acting are understood and accepted, I do not feel the same social anxiety that I do in other contexts. In other words, my social anxiety is a product of me being in a particular environment; if my environment changes to one with different social expectations, the anxiety goes away. Even just knowing that the problem is a transactional one makes a difference on those occasions where I can’t change the environment. Understanding where I might have difficulty allows me to change my approach, and also helps avoid excessive self-blame if things still go awry. I can see my anxiety as a bad environmental fit, rather than entirely a personal failing.

I’m enjoying a little time off at the moment; I’m in between school semesters, and my primary job hasn’t had any projects for me for the past couple of weeks. That means I’m going to have a light paycheck or two, but it’s been really refreshing to have time to read things outside of coursework, and to work on projects that have allowed me to really dive deep in a way I haven’t been able to for a while. It’s been good.

I am also trying to use this time to change up my daily routine, specifically how I structure my mornings and evenings. I tend to find this really difficult; I realize it’s hard for most people to change their habits, but on top of that, I don’t really have a set daily routine. So it’s not just a matter of changing what I do at various times, it’s getting myself to maintain a routine in the first place.

That feels ironic to me, because so much has been said about the fondness we autistic people have for our routines, and how little we like it when things change. In some ways I’m no different, but at the same time I like to have flexibility in my schedule as well. Some days I have more energy, or more creativity, or more ability to focus, and I’d prefer to be able to take advantage of those days in a way that makes sense, instead of having to do the same exact thing every day.

So while I do prefer “sameness” when it comes to doing the things I do (e.g., I like to do them in the same way, and I dislike being blocked from doing them that way, or stopped from doing them at all when I had planned to), that doesn’t always translate into routine. Unless I have some external pressure, like a fixed starting time for my work day, I just don’t maintain a daily routine.

To some degree, I really can’t; the fact that my job doesn’t always provide consistent work means that I don’t have the same schedule from day to day. My class schedule is not the same every day, either—and on days when I have class and work, I have to arrange my schedule differently in order to fit everything in. Add to this the aforementioned preference for paying attention to my varying energy/creativity/focus levels, and I much prefer to vary things as necessary.

I do like some degree of predictability, though, at least on a week-by-week basis. I hate last-minute scheduling that adds something new on the same day, and if I have to reschedule something I would rather push it out to the next week than try to fit it into a week I already have laid out in my head. Because I do — I can see the “fixed points” of the coming week laid out ahead of me like an obstacle course. That gives me some idea of how to fit other work in around them, and some sense of which will be my busy days. When I wake up in the morning, too, I automatically start reviewing those fixed obligations, to get a feel for how I need to time everything else, like work and study and meals and dog walking. Adding in another commitment, even (ugh) a phone call, can throw that timing right off, and everything needs to be reshuffled.

I think most people don’t realize how much effort it takes to do all that reshuffling in my head when the “fixed points” get moved. They probably see me as inflexible when really I’m just overwhelmed because I know how much energy it takes — and that’s extra energy on top of what I need to actually do the things on my schedule. So as soon as I hear about last-minute schedule changes, I’m already spinning out all of the contingencies that ripple out from that change, all the things that need to be rearranged from the carefully-timed plan. It usually all works out (I try not to schedule myself too tightly) but until I’ve got a new plan, I’m anxious. And the less time I’m given to fit in the new thing, the more anxious I get.

Unfortunately, I don’t often get the level of predictability I would prefer, and that is one thing I would really like to change about my work situation. But since I do have this downtime now, I am hoping that I can set up some morning and evening habits that will start to feel established before my obstacle course of a schedule gets filled up again.

I started three separate topics for a blog post this week, thinking I could use one or all of them, but frankly none of them is really coming together. For each one, I started to expand upon my observations and draw conclusions…but then things just fizzled and I couldn’t find the point. So here’s just a glimpse into some of the things swirling in my brain at the moment:

1. I’m done with my school semester! I’m very proud of the work that I did in both of my classes, and I’m looking forward to my spring courses, but I also need a break. Luckily, I have a little over a month off — which of course I have already started filling with work on personal projects. I tend to be reluctant to talk about things still in the works, but those are proving very exciting to me, and I’m looking forward to having some time to dive into them.

2. Gift shopping sucks. I spend so much time trying to find something the other person would like, when their interests and tastes are so much different from mine (and screw you, Theory of Mind theorists who say autistic people can’t understand this) that it stresses me out that I might get it wrong. In fact, I get jarring flashbacks to times I was criticized (sometimes quite harshly) for not spending enough, or not choosing the right thing, or some other gift-giving failure. I recognize that this was entirely not ok, but that doesn’t make it easy to shake off. So gift shopping sucks…but at least it’s done for this year.

3. I’ve made some new friends this year, and reconnected with an old friend I hadn’t spoken with in a long time — but I’m wary. So many times I have thought I found a friend who really “got” me, when in reality, I got them. At first that can feel like the same thing, but in the end it’s not. Ultimately, it takes some time to let things build and figure out whether there is some mutual understanding building, or if it’s more uneven. But that’s what makes me wary.

So yeah, just a few things pulling my thoughts about (and of course there are more, in all sorts of directions). But overall I am heading into my long weekend feeling ready for a rest — which for me includes lots of reading, writing, programming, and crafting, now that I have a little “down time.” Hah!

I have felt on the verge of a meltdown for the past several days. Stress built up steadily for all of last week, and being out of town for the weekend meant that I was not able to maintain my usual routine that brings me into the next week more refreshed. Being aware of this has allowed me to avert some of the negative effects this might have caused, but I still feel like I am running just below the red line. So I started thinking about meltdowns, including the word’s origins in the management of nuclear reactors.

Nuclear reactors run on heat; they essentially use atomic fission as a fancy way to boil water. But too much heat can become dangerous, so there are mechanisms in place to keep the temperature under control. The main one is to circulate water through the system to keep things cooled down to a manageable level. This needs to be done on a continuous basis; even if active fission is not currently happening, the system still needs to be cooled. Things in there are just hot, and it takes a lot of effort to keep that heat balanced and contained.

I often feel like I run hot inside. If operations are proceeding on their usual routine, it’s manageable — I might not even feel it if I’m doing a good job of balancing out stressors with some nice, cooling downtime. Working on projects I’m interested in also feels cooling, even though it can involve a sense of passionate intensity; it’s a different kind of heat, I guess. But I need to have that balance.

If the water circulation in a reactor is stopped, the heat from the fuel rods will boil away any existing water until they are no longer immersed in coolant. At this point, they can literally start to melt, creating a pool of very hot, highly radioactive material on the floor below. If this is left alone, it can get so hot that it melts through the surrounding containers, spreading radioactive contaminants into the outside world.

When I don’t get my cooling time, I can feel things start to come apart. My chest tightens, and I start to feel tension around my eyes. I feel stifled, bottled up, in need of something to release the pressure. At this point, every new frustration, no matter how small, ratchets up the heat a little bit more. And if it’s a big frustration? Now we’re in trouble.

But notice that a meltdown is not an explosion. It is a melt. It is damage sustained by the reactor due to its own heat. That damage can spread outside if its containment becomes broken enough, of course, and that is always the main focus of public concern. But it starts in the core. Whatever else happens, the first casualty is the reactor itself.

My meltdowns don’t hurt other people. Perhaps they’re more like partial meltdowns, when the fuel rods have started to melt, but are able to be cooled before they burn through containment. I cry, I scream, I find other ways to dissipate the heat. So after an initial show of concern, all seems under control, and the public breathes a sigh of relief.

The reactor core, though? Still damaged. Still unbalanced. And still in need of cooling for a good long time.

Yesterday, I attended the AANE (Asperger/Autism Network) 2017 Spring Conference, which was titled Hiding in Plain Sight: Shining Light on Women with Asperger/Autism Profiles. It seemed primarily geared toward professionals working with people on the autism spectrum, but two of the keynote speakers were autistic women, and there were quite a few of us in the audience as well.

VoxVisual wrote up an excellent recap at her blog already, which is great, because I am still too wiped out to be that organized. <grin> And honestly, I don’t know that I would have too much to add when it comes to describing the speakers, the venue, and the overall experience. So go read her summary, if you want to get an idea of what the conference was about.

(And yay, we got to meet! 🙂 That was really cool, even if we had to postpone dinner plans due to exhaustion.)

But while I don’t want to duplicate her efforts in recapping the conference, I do want to write about my subjective experience of planning for, getting to, and physically attending it. First of all, I was selected to read an essay I had submitted, as one of six personal accounts of being a woman on the autism spectrum. (You can read that essay here, if you like.) So even before conference day, I was interacting with the organizers to polish up my essay and make sure I was ready to present it. The volunteers I emailed and talked with were very good about setting expectations and answering all of my questions — clearly they (as women on the spectrum themselves) were aware of some of the anxieties that might arise.

The week before the conference day, I made sure to print out all of the information I would need — directions, schedule, a clean copy of my essay to read — and make a checklist of other things I would need to bring. I wanted to bring plenty of water, for example, and I would be bringing my own lunch. Lunch was included in the conference registration, but having recently cut wheat out of my diet, I was concerned about the gluten content of the sandwiches offered. Besides, I figured the day would be stressful enough without subjecting my body to unfamiliar food (which doesn’t always agree with me).

Google Maps told me the drive would be about two hours each way, but I would be driving in toward Boston (and back out again) around rush hour, so I gave myself extra time. It ended up taking me about 2 1/2 hours each direction; I left home around 6 am and got to the conference center (after parking and making my way through several wings of the hospital building) a little after 8:30. The first speaker didn’t start until 9, so that was perfect.

Check-in was easy, but walking into a large crowd of people outside the venue was disorienting. And it wasn’t just the people: there were tables with food and coffee, other tables with pamphlets and fliers for the organizations who put together the conference, and too many other things to look at. So I went in to find my seat; at least I knew I was supposed to sit down in the front, and when I got there someone recognized my name tag and directed me to a seat.

Since I was early, though, I stood back up to see if I could find Vox. We had told each other what we would be wearing, and shown each other pictures, so this turned out to be easy. 🙂 I felt like we immediately clicked, and spent the rest of the time before 9 chatting about several different things. (As would come up later at lunch, with some other women, socializing with other Aspies/autistics can be soooo much easier!)

I went back to my seat just before 9, where I met a couple of the organizers and some of the other speakers. I felt a little exposed sitting in the front row, right in front of the podium where most of the speakers would be standing (and therefore where the camera for the live-stream would be pointed). This didn’t become evident until the second speaker, though, because the first was himself being live-streamed from the UK. Being in the front row also meant I was looking up most of the time in order to see the slides, or up at a different angle to look at the speakers’ faces. The venue was fairly bright, too, and sometimes the sound was too loud, while other times it was too quiet.

By the noon lunch break, I had finished all of my water (I was very warm for most of the day, as well) and was developing a low-level tension headache. My neck and shoulders were tight, something that had crept up on me without my really noticing it. I think it was all of the ambient noise from the crowd — people turning pages as they followed along with the speakers in their printed slide packets, occasional whispered conversations, people moving around. These are the same sorts of things that had stressed me out while working in an open-plan office, things I didn’t even consciously notice until I learned I was autistic and tried wearing noise-canceling headphones. I guess I still don’t notice them until they’ve built up into tension and pain.

(As an aside, it was interesting to read Vox’s observations of the reactions from the audience, and what things seemed to surprise or interest — or upset — them. Since I was in the front row, I didn’t get a perspective on that.)

Lunch conversation was great, and it was good to get some food. (I also snagged some more water.) It probably wasn’t the best idea when I suggested we seek out a table in the larger hospital cafeteria to eat — it was busy, and sometimes hard to hear each other over the dull roar — but it wasn’t clear where else we could have settled down to eat. The rooms near the conference venue were already pretty full by the time we all got our food.

Settling back down for the afternoon, I was already pretty fried. As I mentioned earlier, I was really warm during most of the day. It was a very cold day, but I thought I had dressed in a way that struck a balance between keeping warm outside and not being too bundled up inside. Apparently I should have worn something a little lighter. It also didn’t help that I was scheduled to present my essay in the mid-afternoon, so I had most of the day to be nervous in anticipation of that. My nerves weren’t too bad in the morning, but during Liane Holliday Willey’s talk after lunch, it was all I could think about.

I also felt like my voice was going to be hoarse from all the talking over lunch and during breaks — but I didn’t want to drink too much water before I had to talk, because I hate the feeling of having to pee while trying to focus on something else. So I decided it was probably for the best for my mouth to be a little dry; it would probably help my voice sound a little clearer than if I had too much moisture.

(Seriously, these are the logistical practicalities that run through my head all the time. All. The. Time.)

In the end, I was very happy with the way my presentation went. My knees were shaking, but my voice wasn’t, and I had a podium on which to steady my hands. After I was done, I was very happy to be sitting in the front row, because I only had a few steps to walk before I was back at my seat and out of the public eye. And I definitely felt my shoulders relax — though not completely — when it was over.

Maybe because of that feeling of finally-now-I-can-relax, I kind of floated through the last talk of the day. It also was a bit less relevant for me, as it related more to parenthood, but I did enjoy some aspects of it. Mostly I was just getting hit by the cumulative weight of all of the sensory input of the venue, the social interactions during lunch and breaks, and the cognitive processing of listening to all of the talks, as well as all of the logistical planning required to navigate through the day. I managed to have a few more — really excellent, I have to say — interactions after the event was over, but yeah, I was very much done.

My brain was foggy with all of that by the time I left, and I still had a 2 1/2 hour drive home — over half of it in the dark. At least in this direction I was leaving the city traffic behind, and most of the night driving was on familiar terrain. I had listened to an audiobook on the way in, but by evening I was talked out and needed music. So I put all of my Dar Williams albums on shuffle and sang along with her for the whole way home. 🙂

Overall, this was a great day, and I enjoyed the conference immensely. While I think there may have been some ways in which the venue might have been improved as far as sensory issues — Vox mentioned several in her post — I also feel like a lot of the things that eventually wore me out were just…going to wear me out. I also think I might have been better off sitting somewhere in the back for the morning, and only down in front during the talk right before my presentation. I would have felt a bit less “on display” and also would have been farther away from the epicenter of all the light and sound.

I feel like there is so much more to say — for example, I really, really enjoyed listening to the keynote speakers and the other first-person accounts, and think they provided a lot of good information and perspective, especially to those in the audience who weren’t on the spectrum. But I wanted to write this up as an example of how…involved it can be to attend something like this as an autistic person. And now I’m going to enjoy a nice quiet weekend to unwind, because I can. 🙂

All of me, not just the parts I carefully choose to show you. That “me” is based on your preconceptions, my fears, and our history (or lack thereof). I just want to be seen.

I don’t want to be seen.

Let your eyes slide right past me, my words go unnoticed. When you ask me a question, I panic, fearing to reveal too much. I don’t want to be seen.

There is no contradiction here.

I just want to be seen…and loved for what you see. I don’t want to be seen…and rejected, ridiculed, reviled. Which direction I go depends on your reaction, and the reactions of all who have come before you, whether you know them or not. It depends on how much risk I want to take, to gamble that this time will be different. And you should know: the odds are not even.

Some days I don’t have too much to say. Last Friday, for example, was a fairly routine day with nothing much to blog about. Saturday and Sunday, however, were days where I had a lot going on, but not enough energy left afterwards to write about it. It was a pretty busy, mostly good but also draining, kind of weekend.

Saturday my husband and I went out shopping. We had planned to go in the afternoon, but there was snow forecasted for later in the day and we wanted to get back before the roads got bad. So we started out a little rushed, but I was looking forward to getting this stuff done.

The first stop on our trip was a local department store, where I wanted to pick up a new pair of jeans and a few other things. That whole experience was extremely draining in an aggravating, over-zealous sales clerk kind of way. I hate clothes shopping in general, and I just want to be left alone to figure out what I want. On top of that, I was looking for men’s jeans (because I’ve basically written off women’s jeans at this point; don’t get me started) and I didn’t want to explain myself. I just wanted to do my shopping, but this one saleswoman wouldn’t take “No, thank you” for an answer and kept trying to be “helpful.”

So I was frazzled by the time we left that store (but happy I had found a pair of jeans I liked), and then we went food shopping. I have recently altered my diet to try to avoid some digestive issues that have been bothering me, so instead of my husband doing the shopping on his own he wanted me to come with him to pick out some new foods. At least here there weren’t salespeople hovering over our every move, but I find grocery stores overwhelming on a sensory level. It’s mostly the sheer volume of STUFF to look at and process. Plus there are bright lights, obstacles to avoid, and decisions to make about this or that brand.

We picked up a lot of good stuff, though, and got back home just as the snow started. By this point we were both starving, which didn’t help my energy levels, but then the rest of the day I could just relax and get some energy back.

Usually we try to do errands like that on Saturdays so that Sunday is free as a real decompression day before the next work week starts. This Sunday, though, we had afternoon plans. I had a local Asperger/autism support group to attend, and he had a meeting with his friend and business partner, who lives close to where my group meets. Both of us were looking forward to our activities, but the place we were going is almost an hour away, so all in all it’s close to a four-hour outing whenever we go, and in wintertime that means driving back in the dark.

My group had a good talk (and I got to vent about the combination of social anxiety and sensory overload I had experienced the previous day) and my husband had a good meeting. It started snowing again on the drive home; it wasn’t sticking to the road yet, but visibility was bad at times. By the time we got home I was again feeling pretty burned out from the driving and two hours of discussion.

The good thing is, my husband had just bought me my first weighted blanket as a present. 🙂 So I curled up under that while he cooked dinner, and by the time we ate I was feeling much more relaxed. Those things are really amazing; mine is only 4 pounds and doesn’t feel like it’s all that heavy when I first spread it over me. But it has such a soothing effect — and more so if I double it up. I let my husband try it after dinner, and he said, “It feels like a hug.”

Even with the blanket, though, all of that is probably why I didn’t sleep very well last night; I had a lot of tension in my body (especially my jaw) and my brain was definitely over-processing. I’ve been trying to take it easy this afternoon, and reminding myself that I have another three-day weekend coming up, when I don’t have any particular plans to go out. If I were still working a job where I had to be in an office with other people every day, I would be in for a very bad week.